Conservationists, Residents in Battle Over Hell's Canyon
12/23/98
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Title: Proposal Would Close Most Roads to Recreation Area
Source: The Associated Press
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: December 23, 1998
IMNAHA Ore. (AP) - The roads to the deepest canyon in North America
are leading to a political battle between conservationists and the
people who live at its edge. Hells Canyon has a 600-mile network of
mostly unpaved roads winding down its basalt walls to the Snake
River, which forms part of the border between Oregon and Idaho. Now,
the federal government must decide how much access is needed to the
650,000-acre Hells Canyon National Recreation Area.
Canyon conservationists say the road system is the unwelcome result
of U.S. Forest Service policies tilted toward recreation, logging and
grazing in the canyon area. They have drafted a new management
proposal, keyed to protecting native plants and animals, that would
close most roads. But many who live in eastern Oregon's Wallowa
County fear the 85-page plan by conservation groups would further
crimp an economy with a per-capita income that ranks 29th among
Oregon's 36 counties. "I feel like they're just trying to force us
clear out of here and make this a playground for the rich," said Fred
Warnock, a retired millworker who raises chickens and hogs on a 200-
acre farm outside of Imnaha.
The backlash against the conservationists' plan prodded county
officials to develop their own Hells Canyon management plan, an
attempt to protect traditional uses. That plan was completed in
November and submitted for federal review. The two proposals are
being reviewed as the Forest Service shifts from managing production
on federal lands to an emphasis on protecting them. The agency has
cut back logging harvests, closed some roads and reduced livestock
grazing. Officials also are proposing aerial herbicide spraying and
other efforts to control weeds that threaten to overwhelm large
expanses of native grasses. "The last two years, this has got all my
alarm bells going off about as loud as they can go," said Kendall
Clark, district ranger for the national recreation area.
The recreation area grew out of a dispute in the early 1970s, when
the federal government approved a dam near the canyon's north end.
But the dam would have drowned sacred Indian sites, flooded prime
cattle pastures and turned the entire Hells Canyon stretch of the
Snake River into a lake. A powerful coalition of tribes,
conservationists, ranchers and powerboat groups lobbied Congress to
enact legislation banning dams from the spectacular canyon, and the
recreation area was created in 1975.
The conservation plan now being considered was developed by the
National Wildlife Federation, the Wilderness Society, the Hells
Canyon Preservation Council and other groups, along with
representatives of the Umatilla and Nez Perce tribes. It would close
more than 60 percent of the road network, minimize the use of off-
road vehicles and snowmobiles, eliminate almost all logging, require
expanded monitoring of livestock grazing and forbid the
reintroduction of cattle or domestic sheep to about 260,000 acres.
"We're looking at the pressures we're going to have 50 to 100 years
from now and trying to plan for an ecosystem as intact as possible,"
said Mary O'Brien, a Eugene-based botanist with the Hells Canyon
Preservation Council and a principal author of the plan.
Forest Service officials initially refused to consider the
conservationists' proposal, listing only the agency's staff-written
options in a draft document released in 1996. In response, O'Brien
traveled to Washington, D.C., last summer to lobby for the plan.
Under pressure, agency officials in Oregon agreed to review the
conservationists' plan, along with agency options, to develop a new
draft document. That's when things heated up in Wallowa County and
more than 200 people, most of them angry, showed up for a Forest
Service meeting in Enterprise to discuss the proposal.
Wallowa County, which borders the west side of the canyon, is losing
timber and mill jobs while farming and ranching are in a slump. "We
love this country; we're not going to destroy it," said Norman
Lovell, a Wallowa County rancher. "If you leave us alone, we'll
protect it."